Fat Shounen Sundays (Weekly Manga Review) : Initial D

March 25, 2012

This was the manga that lead to the destruction/downfall of my high school grades (i’m serious). It’s so good it makes you wanna race all the time. When they released the arcade game, I use to spend hours at the arcade center racing (aka wasting money and time). Enough talk about my younger days, lets get to the story shall we?

The story’s protagonist is a boy by the name of Fujiwara Takumi. Ever since he was a teenager, his father (Fujiwara Bunta) made him learn to drive so that he could help deliver tofu to the bottom of the Akina mountains. Little did he know, his father was the legendary drift king, and all the “delivery” services he helped with were drift training. The first training Takumi ever underwent was the “No Spill” training. What his dad Bunta did was, he filled a cup with water, placed it in the cup holder and told Takumi to not spill one drop. Why? Because if he did, it was an indication that the tofu in the car would be ruined.

Every day Takumi would deliver tofu early in the mornings and as time went by, he developed a drifting skill so precise, he could outrun any/all racers at Mount Akina.

His best friend, Itsuki is a car maniac who loves drifting. He bought a Levin (after hearing about the amazing Levin tofu delivery car out running everyone) and joined the local drifting club (the Akina Speedstars) with his co-workers. He persuaded Takumi to join but he declined as he had no interest in street racing.

One day a bunch of drifters came to Mt. Akina and dissed Itsuki, which got Takumi extremely offended. To settle the score he decided to drive Itsuki’s car in a race against them. No one knew about Takumi’s driving skills, but as soon as he annihilated the outsiders, the word started to spread like wild fire and this was then the story got interesting.

There are so many things to talk about in this manga, but we don’t wanna’ spoil it for you so be sure to check it out when you can! There are 44 volumes in total and if you are new to the manga world…. boy oh boy do you have a lot to read!

The car illustrations were amazing but the I can’t say the same for the people in them though. You’ll get used to it after a while (just like myself). It might be draggy at times but still a really awesome read! So enjoy guys!